The first short interruption was a journey to Mantua with Cardinal Francesco da Gonzaga, in August 1472. The intimate relations between the Gonzaga and the Medici, which corresponded to those between the Marquis Lodovico and the city of Florence, have been already spoken of. Francesco took the youthful poet with him from the Medici house. Poliziano, then aged eighteen, had already given proof of uncommon talent on the occasion of a visit to his native city, where his arrival was celebrated with brilliant festivities. Here originated the drama of ‘Orpheus,’ which made an epoch in literature, less by its actual merit than as the first example of a profane drama in the Italian tongue. Mysteries had long been popular; the modern drama, even when treating modern historical subjects, still more when, as in the works of Alberti and Gregorio Correr, it was directly modelled on the antique, had always adhered to the Latin language. In a letter to one of the cardinal’s suite, Messer Carlo Canale (who was, it may be mentioned, the second or third husband of the mother of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia), the author states that ‘Orpheus’ was composed in two days, amid constant noisy distractions, and that it was written in the vulgar tongue in order to be more intelligible to the hearers—‘an imperfect work, fitted to bring its father shame rather than honour, and worthy of the fate prepared by the Lacedæmonians for children born weakly or crippled.’ This ‘favola’ is not a drama; it is a succession of lyrical pieces, with an ode inserted in Latin Sapphics, in praise of the cardinal, which Baccio Ugolini, another member of the Medicean circle and of Landino’s school, sang to the lyre in the character of ‘Orpheus.’[36] The Mantuan journey was a short episode. Some smaller Latin poems, including the beautiful and pathetic elegy on the death of Albiera degli Albizzi, the charming bride of Sigismondo della Stufa, in 1473, kept Poliziano in the same mood, and cannot fairly be considered as interruptions to his Homeric work. A longer interruption was caused by Giuliano de’ Medici’s tournament, which was a challenge to Angelo to write the fairest flower in his poetic garland.[37] He himself alludes to this interruption in the seventh stanza of the ‘Giostra:’ E se qual fu la fama, il ver rimbomba, Che d’Hecuba la figlia, o sacro Achille, Poi che ‘l corpo lasciasti entro la tomba, T’accenda ancor d’amorose faville, Lascia un poco tacer tua maggior tromba, Ch’io fo squillar per l’italice ville. E tempra tu la cetra a’ nuovi carmi, Mentr’io canto l’amor di Giulio e l’armi.